This is how Sister Petra later described her path to founding the order in India.
At first she grew up in a Catholic and tolerant home with Jewish and Protestant friends in Oelde. Paula was considered intelligent, funny and happy. After graduating from high school, she studied biology, Latin and religion in Münster and Breslau. Christian values, especially charity, shaped her thinking more and more. Family and friends were surprised when she entered the school order of the Werl Ursulines as sister Petra in 1946 and taught in their grammar schools in Werl and Neheim-Hüsten. But in view of the growing prosperity in Germany, Sister Petra found it more and more presumptuous to "see me here so comfortably furnished" 2. She also had the oppressive feeling that as Ursuline she had not followed her real calling and was given a three-year exemption to go to Africa or Asia as a development worker.
Through the mediation of a German doctor, she came to a Caritas institute in South Kerala / India, where she taught novices in religion, English and practical skills, and she helped in the local hospital. The poverty of the people in the remote villages was not hidden from her. She began developing aid programs and job creation measures. With growing restlessness, she realized that she mainly worked for the middle class here. She wasn't there yet. Fortunately, I met Bishop Patroni and Father Zucol from the Diocese of Calicut, who were urgently looking for sisters for extensive aid programs. Sister Petra accepted the tasks and the external circumstances. She fought for more time, but another time off was denied likewise the proposal to found a branch for the Ursulines, so that they decided to found their own community. By mutual agreement, she left her order. June 1, 1969 is considered to be the founding day of DINASEVANASABHA - servants of the poor. On a hill, the Snehaniketan - Place of Love - near the fishing village Pattuvam, Sister Petra began her work with eight young girls under the most difficult conditions with the aim of showing people how to help themselves. She was sure: "This is where my conscience has led me, this is where I will stay" Near the fishing village of Pattuvam, Sister Petra began her work with eight young girls under the most difficult of conditions with the aim of showing people how to help themselves. She was sure: "This is where my conscience has led me, this is where I will stay" Near the fishing village of Pattuvam, Sister Petra began her work with eight young girls under the most difficult of conditions with the aim of showing people how to help themselves. She was sure: "This is where my conscience has led me, this is where I will stay"3 . On June 5, 1976, Sister Petra and four other sisters died in a traffic accident.
The love and help of this courageous, charismatic woman has reached thousands of lepers, AIDS victims, the mentally and physically handicapped, the elderly, orphans, the outcasts and those without a chance over the past 40 years. In 2003 DINASEVANASABHA was recognized by the Vatican as an order of papal law and is now represented in almost all of India with over 80 branches, two of them in Dortmund and Oelde, and around 630 sisters.